Russian Sociological Review is Becoming International

The HSE’s academic journal, Russian Sociological Review, has started publishing articles in English and French. Alexander Filippov, editor-in-chief, explains the changes.

‘The Russian Sociological Review journal is undergoing a transformation. The process has just begun, but readers can already find articles in English and French in this year’s first issue. This is not the only change, but some of the things we are doing are not obvious at first glance.

The changes are related to new requirements from the university administration for HSE academic journals. We are getting more actively involved in international academic communication. From the start, our journal worked to bring the development of Russian theoretical sociology in line with sociology studies around the world. Initially we saw our mission mainly as one of enlightenment: our journal was intended for Russian academics, and we published papers by international sociologists in translation. But this has been changing. We’ve started to give more room to original papers by Russian academics, as well as to articles on the history of Russian social thought. But although our audience, expanded, it still remained Russian-speaking. This year however, everything is changing. We certainly don’t want to lose any of our readers, and that’s why the journal will continue publishing materials in Russian. At the same time, we’ll be publishing more original papers in foreign languages, primarily in English, but also in French and German.

Of course, we are relying on our international colleagues to provide original papers for us. In the current issue we have an article by French sociologistAlbert Ogien, Politique de la rue et politique des urnes (Street Politics and the Politics of the Ballot Box), which hasn’t been published before. The Centre for Fundamental Sociology has been working with Albert Ogien for a long time, and this paper is not only an interesting work in itself, but also a kind show of support for our innovation.

Another article we are publishing in a foreign language is by Artemy Magun, Negativity in Communism: Ontology and Politics.

This year we are also planning to publish a special issue in foreign languages - the theme is currently under discussion.

Of course, in the first stage of this process, we rely on our colleagues who are our partners in research, but over time, I believe the same thing will happen as with the Russian-language journal. I believe we’ll get an inflow of articles from all over the world. We have a settled practice of reviewing the articles sent to us, which is in line with global standards; we have an international editorial board and over ten years of experience. I hope that the journal will be informative, interesting, and high quality.’